24/7 televideo e-health: the doctor will see you now … via video

For $76 a consultation patients may be able to use video to exhibit symptoms to their doctor, under Telstra’s ReadyCare.

Telstra

Doctors’ appointments could soon go the way of the landline telephone with the launch of ­Telstra’s flagship telemedicine service ReadyCare, a 24/7 video and telephone hotline that will provide advice, treatment, diagnosis and prescriptions directly into people’s homes.

ReadyCare is a joint venture between Telstra and Swiss telemedicine provider Medgate, the brains behind the new service that is used in Switzerland to treat more than 4300 patients a day.

The service was developed to complement conventional health services and ease the load and wait times for conventional GP services by providing online medical advice for patients. ­Patients who use the service will be able to use a video facility to ­exhibit symptoms and if necessary, upload images of their condition, that will be assessed by qualified GPs.

The long-anticipated launch of the ReadyCare system is being pitched at insurance companies and corporate clients, including mining companies in remote areas, but the service is also immediately available for consumers at $76 per consultation.

Telstra has recruited a team of 20 GPs to provide guidance and medical advice for ReadyCare but the telco has ambitions to eventually recruit GPs who could supplement their regular income with extra consultations.

“This is really an example of where Telstra is willing to ­innovate to lead and invest in the digital disruption in health,” said Telstra Health managing director Shane Solomon.

“This will give consumers a choice in the short-term but in the long-term this is about how a lot of medicine and healthcare will be practised. Our vision is that every GP practice will have a telemedicine component and what we are doing here is proving that it can be done.”

The service, however, won’t be bulk-billed as telemedicine is not part of the Medicare benefits schedule, hence the need for ­patients to pay $76 per consultation when using ReadyCare.

“Clearly it would be better if it was (part of Medicare),” Mr Solomon said.

“Our whole objective here is to prove that this can be done, ­because it’s very hard to get something on the Medicare benefit schedule if it doesn’t exist.”

ReadyCare has already signed on a foundational corporate customer in travel insurance provider Cover-More Group. The insurer plans to offer access to Australian doctors via video and phone links for its customers who travel abroad.

Mr Solomon said the telco was also in talks with mining companies, prisons and state governments who had shown an interest in using the service.

“Surprisingly enough, there are more B2B-type users than we imagined, such as people in prisons, those in remote Australia, or insurers who don’t have regular GPs. We are also testing B2C. For example, as part of our staff benefits, we’re offering discount rates, and so we’re going to test the willingness,” Mr Solomon said.

“It’s not going to be for everyone in the mass market, but our aim is to prove it and get it to a point where it is in the mass ­market.”

The launch of ReadyCare forms part of Telstra’s ambitious plans to build a $1 billion-a-year business and the nation’s No 1 health service provider by 2020. The Health unit — carved out as a separate division at Telstra in ­October last year — has been on an acquisition war path over the past 24 months, spending more than $130 million on investments and joint ventures as it seeks to build the nation’s first integrated health system that will provide technology solutions in tele­medicine, aged and residential care, hospital, radiology and pathology.